Members of the European Parliament have questioned the nature of French and United Nations intervention in the Ivory Coast, just hours after a final surge resulted in the capture of the country's incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo.

Paris has denied reports that it was French forces who successfully extracted Gbagbo from a bunker within the presidential palace in the city of Abidjan on Monday evening (11 April), but the dismissals have failed to halt cries of 'neocolonialism'.